Cigarette COMPANIES CONTINUE TO ADVERTISE TO KIDS - Brief Article

Healthfacts, Sept, 2001 by Maryann Napoli

As part of its landmark settlement, the tobacco industry agreed to stop advertising cigarettes to children. Now, three years later, the agreement "appears to have had little effect on cigarette advertising in magazines and on the exposure of young people to these advertisements," according to a new analysis conducted by Charles King, III, JD, and Michael Siegel, MD, of the Harvard Business School and the Boston University School of Public Health, respectively. Their results were published last month in The New England Journal of Medicine (8/16/01).

King and Siegel examined the cigarette advertising expenditures and the exposure of young people to advertising before and after the Master Settlement Agreement with the four largest tobacco companies in the U.S. They estimated that, in 2000, magazine ads for "youth brands" of cigarettes reached more than 80% of young people in the U.S. an average of 17 times each. The researchers looked at the trends in advertising expenditures for 15 different cigarette brands and the cigarette ads aimed at young people in 38 magazines between 1995 and 2000. They found that advertising expenditures for youth brands in youth-oriented magazines had actually increased since the settlement--from $56.4 million in 1995 to $59.6 million in 2000.

Three of the four largest companies--R.J. Reynolds, Lorillard, Brown & Williamson--told The New York Times that they continue advertising because the limits they agreed to in 1998 "were only guidelines, not laws." Philip Morris said it stopped as of last year.

The broad goals of the settlement were described in an accompanying editorial by the former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner, David A. Kessler, MD, and Matthew L. Myers, JD, National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids. Each state planned to initiate programs that would counteract the effect of marketing, reduce exposure of young people to tobacco marketing, and introduce smoking prevention strategies.

Instead, say Kessler and Myers, "The industry has simply shifted its resources to concentrate on areas that were not restricted by the settlement. In 1999, the year after the agreement was signed, the marketing expenditures of cigarette companies actually rose 22 percent to a record $8.24 billion. The use of in-store promotions, discounts on cigarette brands favored by children, and free gifts that appeal to young people skyrocketed. Advertising in youth-oriented magazines and advertising outside retail stores also increased, whereas the amount spent on the sponsorship of events, such as auto races, changed little."

No smoking reduction efforts will succeed, concluded King and Siegel, without a complete understanding of the entire marketing programs of the tobacco companies.

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Maryann Napoli is the associate director of the Center for Medical Consumers in New York City.